POLICE INTEGRITY LOST

The purpose of the research project is to promote police integrity by gaining a better understanding of police crime and agency responses to officer arrests. The study provides a wealth of data on a phenomena that relates directly to police integrity—data that police executives have not previously had access to because this information did not exist in any useable format.

PROJECT ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

In the previous reporting period we substantially completed tasks 1-5 and 74.6% of task 6 on our project timeline. In this reporting period we completed task 6 (conduct PACER searches), started work on task 7 (code content of articles and other case documents), and continued to make progress on task 11 (analyze data and write articles) on our project timeline. The project timeline called for task 7 to be substantially completed during the months of August through December 2012. It has proven to be slower going than we projected, however, and are still coding documents relating to arrest cases in the first of four years (2008-2011) needing to be completed. The coding of content was slowed by enhanced training of new graduate research assistants who started work in August 2012, as well as by the fact that it is taking coders longer to complete the coding process for each case than anticipated. At the end of this reporting period, tasks 1-6 are 100% complete, and task 7 is 15% complete. Task 11 is ongoing.

As of the close of business on December 31, 2012, a total of 7,383 police crime arrest cases involving 6,317 individual officers have been logged in our integrated relational and digital imaging database. Of these, 6,437 cases involve 5,480 individual officers arrested for one or more crimes during the time period of January 1, 2005, through December 31, 2011 (946 arrest cases logged in were for officers arrested during the year 2012). Prior to July 1, 2012, there were 6,693 police crime arrest cases (involving 5,752 individual sworn law enforcement officers) that had previously been logged in our database. Thus, during this reporting period we added 690 new police crime arrest cases and 565 more sworn officers to our database (including 195 new cases involving 122 individual officers who were arrested during the years 2005-2011). In sum, during this reporting period, we expanded our database of known police crime arrest cases by 13.1% overall (an increase of 3.1% for the study years 2005-2011 arrest cases).

We continue to make enhancements to our project database, which utilizes an enterprise-level content management system, OnBase. During the prior reporting period we designed and implemented a relational database that is now integrated with our digital imaging database within OnBase. We are now focusing on SPSS software integration with the project database. The integrated relational and digital imaging database includes electronic case log-in procedures and allows us to structure and search data in different ways for content analyses. During the first quarter of calendar year 2013 we will deploy a PC-based on-screen coding instrument using customized IBM/SPSS Data Collection/Data Entry Author/Interviewer modules that will also be integrated with our OnBase project relational and digital imaging database.

The digital imaging database includes 152,006 scanned pages of digital images, consisting of 13,182 TIFF case document files, 11,382 TIFF coding sheet document files, and 5,132 PDF PACER document files. Of these, 82,784 pages were added since July 1, 2012, consisting of 2,787 case document files and 1,680 coding sheet document files, and 5,132 PACER document files. The PACER files consisting of 69,841 pages were recently electronically imported into our OnBase project database and indexed using a customized automated document import processor.

In sum, our digital imaging database currently includes more than 152,000 pages of news articles, court records, and coding sheets that document the criminal arrests of more than 6,000 police officers since the beginning of 2005. These officers were employed in state, local, special, and tribal law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

We learned that training of graduate research assistants and the process of coding the content of case file records is more time-consuming and slower than we anticipated when we developed the project timeline. Crucial to timely completion of the project will be the implementation of our PC-based coding instrument that will replace our paper-based coding sheets as early as February 2013.

PROJECT GOALS:

There are three major goals of the project. The first goal of this research is to determine the nature and extent of police crime in the United States. The second goal is to determine what factors influence how a police organization responds to arrests of officers. The third and final goal of the research is to foster police integrity by exploring whether police crime and officer arrests correlate with other forms of police misconduct.

DISSEMINATION OF PROJECT RESULTS TO COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST:

Results have been disseminated to communities of interest through the writing and publication of refereed journal articles, magazine articles, and research briefs. We also maintain a project website and blog, and produce a monthly audio podcast that is available on iTunes.

We have proactively worked to disseminate our research results to communities of interest. To that end, we have engaged in outreach activities to reach members of communities who are not usually aware of these research activities, for the purpose of enhancing public understanding and increasing interest in learning and careers in criminological research. We have published two short research-brief articles reporting our research findings in Police Chief, a practitioner-oriented magazine published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. We also make PDF copies of one-sheet research briefs explaining our research studies and findings on our web-site and post timely project-related entries on our blog. Additionally, we distribute audio podcasts on iTunes where we discuss the research project, studies, and related findings.

The web analytic reports for the Police Integrity Lost Blog indicate that for the time period July 1, 2012, through December 31, 2012, there were 1,054 unique visitors to the blog. Traffic to the blog was primarily from the United States (96.2%) where visitors to the blog were located in 152 cities across the country, but there were also visitors to the blog from India, Philippines, Australia, Canada, Algeria, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, and Poland. Traffic to the blog included direct traffic (73.53%), search traffic (17.17%), and referral traffic (9.3%).

The iTunes podcast is available domestically as well as internationally, and interested persons can stream, download, and/or subscribe to the podcast audio files directly from the iTunes client application. Web analytics for the iTunes podcast episodes indicates that for the period September 1, 2012, through December 31, 2012, there were 3,487 mp3 file hits, indicating that there were 3,487 instances when someone either streamed (listened to) all or part of one of our podcast episodes and/or downloaded mp3 audio files. Of those hits, the largest number of requests directed to our pod server to stream and/or download the mp3 audio files was in October 2012 when there were 1,363 hits on the Police Drug Corruption podcast (Police Integrity Lost Podcast Episode 1) and 1,426 hits on the Off-Duty Police Crime podcast (Police Integrity Lost Podcast Episode 3).

PLANS FOR NEXT REPORTING PERIOD TO ACCOMPLISH THE PROJECT GOALS:

We have added additional research staff to complete task 7 on the project timeline. The NIJ grant provides two 20-hour/week graduate research assistants. Additional staff research assistants are being assigned to the project staff at University expense as an in-kind contribution. Three additional 20-hour/week graduate assistants have been assigned to the project staff and are now being trained to code the content of the case files. At this time, we anticipate substantial completion of tasks 7-10 on the project timeline by the end of July 2013.

Currently, we are preparing three papers that will soon be submitted to refereed journals for publication consideration: Police Drunk Driving Arrests, Crime by School Resource Officers, and Crime by Policewomen. We will be presenting our findings on a study of Police Sexual Misconduct Arrests in a presentation at the annual conference of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences on March 21, 2013, in Dallas, Texas. Additionally, we have several speaking engagements in Ohio during January and February 2013 where we will discuss our research findings related to Officer-involved Domestic Violence.

We will continue to work on papers that we will submit to journals for publication consideration, and will also continue to produce our monthly audio podcast for iTunes. We have also started preliminary work on Task 12 on the project timeline, and are outlining and writing the introduction (including the literature review) and methods section for the final technical report.

PRODUCTS PRODUCED BY THE PROJECT:

The project has produced two peer-reviewed journal articles, two research brief magazine articles, four one-sheet research briefs, six mp3 audio podcast episodes, and five research presentations.

In this episode of the Police Integrity Lost podcast, Phil Stinson and John Liederbach discuss late-stage police crime. Stinson and Liederbach are both professors in the Criminal Justice Program at Bowling Green State University. Their study on late-stage police crime Exit Strategy: An Exploration of Late-Stage Police Crime was published in 2010 in the refereed journal Police Quarterly. The purpose of the study was to examine the character of police arrests known to the media. Cases were identified through a content analysis of news coverage using the internet-based Google News ^TM search engine and its Google News Alerts ^TM email update service search tool. The study is important because there were previously no exhaustive statistics available on the crimes committed by law enforcement officers, and only a small number of studies provide specific data on police crimes. The study focuses on the crimes committed by experienced officers who are approaching retirement. The occurrence of these late-stage crimes presents a challenge to existing assumptions regarding the relationship between experience and various forms of police misconduct, and also provides an opportunity to examine a stage of the police career that has not been the subject of much research. In this podcast episode Stinson and Liederbach discuss the research and policy implications, as well as how their data should be interpreted within the context of existing studies on police socialization and the production of misconduct.

BGSU Professor Phil Stinson will speak at a meeting of the Northwest Ohio Municipal/County Judges Association on Tuesday, January 22, 2013, in Perrysburg, Ohio. Stinson will discuss his recent research findings on officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV) and specifically address issues relating to the Lautenberg Amendment. The 1997 Lautenberg Amendment to the federal Gun Control Act prohibits anyone (including military and law enforcement officers) who has been convicted of a qualified misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from possessing a firearm or ammunition.

The December 2012 episode of the Police Integrity Lost podcast is Crime by Policewomen: Is it Different than Crime by Policemen? It is available exclusively on iTunes. In this episode, Phil Stinson and Natalie Todak discuss their recent research study that explored criminal conduct by policewomen at various nonfederal law enforcement agencies across the United States. The information is increasingly relevant as departments hire more female officers, especially if their crimes are different than crimes by male officers. Using the Google News search engine and Google Alerts, the research team identified 105 cases depicting arrests of policewomen and a content analysis was performed. Findings reveal that female police crime is most often profit-motivated. Compared to arrested male officers, policewomen had fewer years of service and lower ranks, committed less violent crimes, and were more likely to receive suspensions for off-duty crimes. The findings suggest that differences exist between crimes committed by male and female officers. Phil Stinson is on the faculty at Bowling Green State University, and Natalie Todak is a doctoral student at Arizona State University.

A research brief article by Phil Stinson and John Liederbach entitled Misconduct by Experienced Police Officers is published in the November 2012 issue of Police Chief Magazine.  The article briefly summarizes the 2010 study on late-stage police crime where Stinson and Liederbach found that almost 20% of police officers arrested occurred late in officer’s careers, often on the cusp of retirement, at 18 or more years of service.

The November 2012 episode of the Police Integrity Lost podcast is entitled Police Criminal Misuse of TASERs. In this episode of the podcast, Bowling Green State University criminal justice professors Phil Stinson and John Liederbach discuss their recent research study on police misconduct involving conductive energy devices. The study Police Crime and Less-than-Lethal Coercive Force: A Description of the Criminal Misuse of TASERs was published earlier this year in International Journal of Police Science & Management. It explores and describes the nature and character of cases involving the criminal misuse of TASERs by police officers through a content analysis of news articles. The news-based content analysis identified 24 state and local police officers in the United States who were arrested for crimes involving inappropriate use of TASERs over a 65-month period from January 2005 to May 2010. In the podcast episode, Stinson and Liederbach discuss some factors that were common among these events, especially with regard to the actions and motivations of the arrested officers and how the situational context appeared to influence the criminal misconduct of officers. The findings of the research study indicate that the cases examined did not involve much, if any, situational risk to the officer. The criminal misuse of TASERs seems more likely to involve suspects who are already handcuffed, or even citizens who are clearly not criminals at all. The Police Integrity Lost podcast is distributed exclusively on iTunes.

Phil Stinson and John Liederbach–together with several colleagues–will present findings of two of their recent research studies related to police crime and police integrity at the annual conference of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) in Chicago, IL, on November 15, 2012.

The first presentation, Drunk Driving Cops: A Study of Police Officers Arrested for DUI, 2005-2010, will highlight various predictors of two outcome variables: job loss and criminal case disposition. The study sample consists of data related to 782 DUI cases where 750 sworn officers were arrested during the years 2005-2010. The arrested officers were employed by 511 non-federal state and local law enforcement agencies located in 406 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The second presentation is entitled CHAID Analysis of Drug-related Police Corruption Arrests. This study analyzed data on 221 drug-related cases where non-federal sworn law enforcement officers were arrested during the years 2005-2007. Findings show that drug-related police corruption involves a wide range of criminal offenses, and cocaine is the most prevalent drug. Older officers is are less likely than younger officers to lose their jobs after a drug-related arrest.